Neurodivergent Strategies for Late-Diagnosed Adults: The Divergent Paths Podcast

Neurodivergent Strategies for Late-Diagnosed Adults: The Divergent Paths Podcast

di Regina McMenomy, PhD.
Salute mentale
Neurodivergent Secure Attachment and Unmasking: The Paradox of Being Seen
It is a terrifying thing to stand in a spotlight you never agreed to walk into. When you're a late-diagnosed neurodivergent adult you might have heard dropping the mask brings instant freedom, but nobody warns you about the deep ache of finally being seen for exactly who you are. When someone looks past your carefully constructed, people-pleasing performance and embraces your messy, genuine self, your nervous system might actually scream danger instead of feeling relief. In this deeply personal episode, Dr. Regina McMenomy Ph.D. explores the emotional reality of the "visibility gap"—the awkward, liminal space between who you used to be and who you are becoming. For late-diagnosed adults, their mask wasn't just a habit; it was a protective system built brick by brick. This episode unpacks why unmasking is a relational event, why being misread hurts so much more once you are trying to be authentic, and how your nervous system gradually calibrates to accept true belonging and secure, safe connections. Sign up for N.E.R.D. Notes and get weekly nerdy neurodivergent insights! Chat with Regina on Instagram @drreginaphd Book a Make it Make Sense Call with Regina About Dr. Regina McMenomy, PhD Regina is a neurodivergent coach and educator who helps late-diagnosed adults unmask, heal from burnout, and build lives aligned with how their brains work. She founded Divergent Paths Consulting to provide the type of coaching and support that late-diagnosed nerdy neurodivergent folks need after receiving their late diagnoses.
E70
12 giu 2026
11:48
Romantic Hyperfixation, and Attachment Styles: How and Why You Can't Stop Thinking about Them
You recognize the feeling the moment it starts. One conversation, one interaction, and suddenly this person is everywhere in your brain, first thing in the morning, last thing at night, and approximately 47 times in between. You're not just interested. You're consumed. And if you're neurodivergent, there's a reason it hits that hard. In this episode, Dr. Regina and Russ break down limerence (also called romantic hyperfixation), why ADHD and autistic brains are especially susceptible to it, and how your attachment style either fuels the fire or keeps the loop going indefinitely. If you've ever turned a person into a puzzle you couldn't stop trying to solve, this one's for you. If you've ever confused intensity for intimacy, or chased the high of pursuit without realizing why, this episode gives you the language and the framework to finally understand what was happening and what to do about it. Sign up for N.E.R.D. Notes and get weekly nerdy neurodivergent insights! Chat with Regina on Instagram @drreginaphd Book a Make it Make Sense Call with Regina About Dr. Regina McMenomy, PhD Regina is a neurodivergent coach and educator who helps late-diagnosed adults unmask, heal from burnout, and build lives aligned with how their brains work. She founded Divergent Paths Consulting to provide the type of coaching and support that late-diagnosed nerdy neurodivergent folks need after receiving their late diagnoses.
E69
5 giu 2026
21:47
Neurodivergent Anxious Attachment and People Pleasing: When Self Abandonment Feels Like your Whole Personality
Have you ever spent hours decoding a single text message, or convinced yourself that anticipating everyone else's needs was how to be a "good friend"? If you are late-identified neurodivergent, what you’ve always praised as a thoughtful personality trait might actually be a highly activated nervous system response. In this episode of Divergent Paths, Dr. Regina McMenomy Ph.D. breaks down the intersection of anxious attachment, codependency, and masking. She explores how growing up with unpredictable connections teaches your nervous system to stay hyper-vigilant, leading to a habit of reading the room at the expense of your own boundaries. You'll discover why self-abandonment gets socially rewarded as being "low maintenance" and how to start tracking your internal signals instead of everyone else’s emotional state. It’s time to stop prioritizing everyone else's comfort and start learning how to check back in on yourself. Sign up for N.E.R.D. Notes and get weekly nerdy neurodivergent insights! Chat with Regina on Instagram @drreginaphd Book a Make it Make Sense Call with Regina About Dr. Regina McMenomy, PhD Regina is a neurodivergent coach and educator who helps late-diagnosed adults unmask, heal from burnout, and build lives aligned with how their brains work. She founded Divergent Paths Consulting to provide the type of coaching and support that late-diagnosed nerdy neurodivergent folks need after receiving their late diagnoses.
E68
29 mag 2026
13:45
Enmeshment and Late Diagnosis: Why You Don't Know What You Actually Want
Do you know what you actually want? Not what makes everyone else comfortable, not what keeps the peace, but what you want? For many late-diagnosed and late-identifying neurodivergent adults, that question is genuinely hard to answer. It's often the result of enmeshment. In this episode, Dr. Regina McMenomy Ph.D. breaks down why enmeshment is so common among neurodivergent people, how a lifetime of masking sets the stage for boundaryless relationships, and what it actually looks like to start finding your edges. This episode is for you if you've ever left a conversation feeling drained in a way that goes beyond introversion, if you've caught yourself riding someone else's emotional wave without knowing how you climbed aboard, or if you're in the middle of figuring out who you actually are post-diagnosis. Sign up for N.E.R.D. Notes and get weekly nerdy neurodivergent insights! Chat with Regina on Instagram @drreginaphd Book a Make it Make Sense Call with Regina About Dr. Regina McMenomy, PhD Regina is a neurodivergent coach and educator who helps late-diagnosed adults unmask, heal from burnout, and build lives aligned with how their brains work. She founded Divergent Paths Consulting to provide the type of coaching and support that late-diagnosed nerdy neurodivergent folks need after receiving their late diagnoses.
E67
22 mag 2026
15:19
Why Neurodivergent People Track Everyone Else's Emotions Instead of Their Own
If you've ever wondered why you always know when someone else is upset but can't tell if you're hungry, this one is for you. Most late-diagnosed neurodivergent people aren't exhausted from their schedule. They're exhausted from the constant low-level work of monitoring everyone else's emotional states. In this episode of Divergent Paths, Dr. Regina Ph.D. introduces the concept of the emotional dashboard and breaks down exactly why so many ADHD and autistic adults learned to read other people's feelings instead of their own. This episode unpacks the layered reasons behind this pattern, including interoception differences in ADHD and autistic brains, monitoring others' emotional states as a strategy for managing rejection sensitive dysphoria (RSD), the connection between masking and people-pleasing, and how codependency in neurodivergent people is adaptive, not a character flaw. Sign up for N.E.R.D. Notes and get weekly nerdy neurodivergent insights! Book a Make it Make Sense Call with Regina About Dr. Regina McMenomy, PhD Regina is a neurodivergent coach and educator who helps late-diagnosed adults unmask, heal from burnout, and build lives aligned with how their brains work. She founded Divergent Paths Consulting to provide the type of coaching and support that late-diagnosed nerdy neurodivergent folks need after receiving their late diagnoses.
E66
15 mag 2026
12:45
People Pleasing, Masking, and Codependency: A Structure Late Diagnosis Reveals
If you've spent your whole life being told you're so good at reading the room, this episode might reframe everything. Codependency is one of those words that gets thrown around casually, usually as a polite way of calling someone too needy. But for late-diagnosed and late-identified neurodivergent adults, the pattern looks entirely different, and it doesn't come from neediness. It comes from survival. In this episode, Dr. Regina McMenomy, Ph.D. and co-host Russ, break down what codependency actually is, where it came from as a clinical framework, and why neurodivergent people, particularly those who spent years masking without knowing it, are disproportionately likely to develop these patterns. When reading the room is how you stayed safe, outsourcing your sense of self to the people around you isn't a character flaw. It's an adaptive strategy. One that works, until it doesn't. Sign up for N.E.R.D. Notes and get weekly nerdy neurodivergent insights! Book a Make it Make Sense Call with Regina About Dr. Regina McMenomy, PhD Regina is a neurodivergent coach and educator who helps late-diagnosed adults unmask, heal from burnout, and build lives aligned with how their brains work. She founded Divergent Paths Consulting to provide the type of coaching and support that late-diagnosed nerdy neurodivergent folks need after receiving their late diagnoses.
E65
8 mag 2026
17:31
I Studied Identity for Years... and Had No Idea I Didn't Have One
What if the research you spent years obsessing over was actually about your late diagnosis the whole time? In this episode, Dr. Regina Ph.D. traces an unexpected connection between her dissertation research on identity formation in digital role-playing games and her own late diagnosis experience. The question she thought she was asking turned out to be far more personal than she realized, and the answer says something important about why so many late-diagnosed adults struggle to know who they actually are. She unpacks how masking and people pleasing, though they look different on the surface, function as the same underlying system. And why that system, however logical it was, came with a cost most of us don't fully see until something forces us to look. If you've ever wondered how much of the self you built was really yours, this one is going to hit. This is the first episode in a new series exploring Neurodivergent Codependency, where those patterns come from, how they show up in work and relationships, and what it actually looks like to start building an identity that belongs to you. Sign up for N.E.R.D. Notes and get weekly nerdy neurodivergent insights! Book a Make it Make Sense Call with Regina Follow Regina on Instagram About Dr. Regina McMenomy, PhD Regina is a neurodivergent coach and educator who helps late-diagnosed adults unmask, heal from burnout, and build lives aligned with how their brains work. She founded Divergent Paths Consulting to provide the type of coaching and support that late-diagnosed nerdy neurodivergent folks need after receiving their late diagnoses.
E64
1 mag 2026
10:05
Rejection Sensitivity & the Scripts We Write: When RSD Isn't About Rejection
Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria (RSD) gets talked about a lot in neurodivergent spaces, but there's a layer to it that most people miss: sometimes the pain isn't about rejection at all. In this episode, Dr. Regina McMenomy Ph.D. shares a personal story about sending a bid for connection and the moment everything went sideways, not because the response was unkind, but because it didn't match the emotional script she had already written in her head. That gap between anticipated response and actual response, it turns out, is its own distinct trigger for RSD. If you've ever felt a wave of hurt when someone's reaction didn't land the way you expected, even when nothing actually went wrong, this episode is for you. You'll take away: A new framework for understanding RSD triggers that go beyond perceived criticism Why neurodivergent people sometimes "pre-feel" emotional responses, and what that reveals How to separate emotional impact from intention without assigning blame A more compassionate lens on the part of you that keeps writing the scripts Sign up for N.E.R.D. Notes and get weekly nerdy neurodivergent insights! Book a Clarity Call with Regina About Dr. Regina McMenomy, PhD Regina is a neurodivergent coach and educator who helps late-diagnosed adults unmask, heal from burnout, and build lives aligned with how their brains work. She founded Divergent Paths Consulting to provide the type of coaching and support that late-diagnosed nerdy neurodivergent folks need after receiving their late diagnoses.
E63
24 apr 2026
8:54
Neurodivergent Skill Regression: When Skills We Thought We Mastered Become a Challenge Again
If you've started unmasking and suddenly feel like you can't do things you used to handle effortlessly, you're not imagining things. In this episode of Divergent Paths, Dr. Regina Ph.D. breaks down skill regression, a disorienting but normal phase of the unmasking journey that many late-identified neurodivergent adults experience. Regina explains how so many of us built our skills, routines, and even our sense of identity around a masked, performative self, and why removing that mask can feel like losing abilities overnight. She covers how social skills and reading the room were often fueled by hypervigilance and fear, and why glitches in those skills are actually a sign of progress. This episode reframes skill regression not as a setback, but as a data-collection process, a chance to discover what you are truly capable of as your authentic self. If you've been late diagnosed with ADHD, autism, or another form of neurodivergence, this episode will help you understand the awkward, in-between phase of unmasking with more compassion and context. Sign up for N.E.R.D. Notes and get weekly nerdy neurodivergent insights! Book a Clarity Call with Regina About Dr. Regina McMenomy, PhD Regina is a neurodivergent coach and educator who helps late-diagnosed adults unmask, heal from burnout, and build lives aligned with how their brains work. She founded Divergent Paths Consulting to provide the type of coaching and support that late-diagnosed nerdy neurodivergent folks need after receiving their late diagnoses.
E62
17 apr 2026
10:20
Neurodivergent Unmasking at Home: Why You Fall Apart With the People You Love Most
You held it together all day: smiled at your coworkers, made small talk, kept the mask firmly in place. So why do you walk through your front door and completely fall apart? And why does the guilt that follows make everything worse? In this episode of Divergent Paths, Dr. Regina, PhD, sits down with Russ to unpack one of the most misunderstood experiences for late-diagnosed neurodivergent adults: unmasking at home. If you've ever snapped at the people you love most and immediately hated yourself for it, this episode is for you. What you'll learn: Why masking at work depletes your executive functioning and what that actually means when you walk through the front door The difference between the "unmasked you" and the dysregulated you (and why your family isn't actually seeing the real you either) How compounding shame and guilt make the next day even harder Why your kids acting out at home is actually a sign of secure attachment not bad parenting How to build trust and safety at home that allows everyone to regulate more effectively Whether you're ADHD, autistic, or newly diagnosed, Dr. Regina offers practical insight into breaking the exhaustion-snap-guilt cycle and building deeper, more authentic connections with the people you love. Sign up for N.E.R.D. Notes and get weekly nerdy neurodivergent insights! Book a Clarity Call with Regina About Dr. Regina McMenomy, PhD Regina is a neurodivergent coach and educator who helps late-diagnosed adults unmask, heal from burnout, and build lives aligned with how their brains work. She founded Divergent Paths Consulting to provide the type of coaching and support that late-diagnosed nerdy neurodivergent folks need after receiving their late diagnoses.
E61
10 apr 2026
17:54
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